« Reply #3 on: Sunday 18 February 18 11:26 GMT (UK) »
You might also wish to consider an autosomal test, perhaps instead of the Y test. Cheaper and becoming more and more mainstream, offered by a variety of companies. It would provide you with matches on your maternal as well as paternal lines, and estimate how far back you might need to go to find the common ancestor, whereas with Y testing if you get a close match there's not really any way of telling how far back it goes. With Y testing you might get lucky with a table full of all the same surname, but the only good match my father got with someone of the same surname was his known cousin, all his other matches are a complete mix of surnames and not close anyway (the chromosome slowly mutates and for these other matches the mutation is quite significant).
Bear in mind that the advertised promises are on the optimistic side and dependent on matches having accurate trees on their DNA databases. If you don't have a tree and your top match doesn't have a tree then the name of the elusive MRCA (most recent common ancestor) isn't going to materialise out of the ether.
Jane :-)
ALLEN
BARR, BARRATT, BERRY, BRADLEY,BRAMLEY,BRISTOW,BROWN,BUGBIRD,BUTLER
CAIN,CARR,CHAPMAN,CHARLES,CH*LTON,CHESTER,COCKETT
COLLASON,COLLYER,CORKERY
DARLING, DENYER,DICKERSON,DOLLING,DURBAN
FARMER,FURNELL
GIBSON,GILES,GROOMBRIDGE
HALL,HAMBIDGE,HARMES,HART,HICKS,HILL,HOLLOWAY
JACKSON
K*AT*S
LANCASTER,LINTON
MCDONALD,MCFADEN,MEARS,MILLARD
NICOLAS,NOAK,NORTH
PARFIT,PORTER
RIPPINGALE,ROBINS
SEARLE,SPENCER,STEDHAM
TYLER,TILLY,TUCKWELL
WADE,WAGER,WALKER,WATSON,WEBB,WITHRINGTON,WOOD